


Till Death Do We Two Part

by MarchOfTheFalseHeteros



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Grief/Mourning, HIV/AIDS, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9808418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarchOfTheFalseHeteros/pseuds/MarchOfTheFalseHeteros
Summary: What happened after Jason's bar mitzvah, leading up to Whizzer's death.WARNING: SADFIC (duh)





	

"Do you know…all I want is you? Anything you do is alright…"

Whizzer sat doubled over on the bench outside the racquetball court, pale, shaking, and sweating. The nearest trash bin had been hastily grabbed for him to vomit into, which he was increasingly beginning to fear was inevitable. Meanwhile, Marvin was desperately pacing in the phone booth, waiting for Charlotte to pick up. 

“Hello?” the warm, comforting voice finally said.

“Charlotte! Oh, thank God,” Marvin said, his heartbeat slowing down marginally.

“Marvin? What’s going on?”

“It’s Whizzer. We were playing racquetball, and…he must have gotten over exhausted or something, because he collapsed right in the middle, and now he’s sweating and shaking like crazy-“ He was cut off by the sound of his lover violently vomiting and swearing, at which he began to shake again. “Yeah…he just vomited. Does he need to come down to Mt. Sinai, or is he gonna be okay?”

Charlotte was silent on the other line for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Marvin could only hear himself breathing into the phone. Whizzer vomited again, and Marvin had to physically restrain himself from running to his side.

“Marvin…” said Charlotte finally, with an air of solemnity that made Marvin nearly sob, “Bring him here. Now.”

 

______________________________________________________________________________

 

“Oh my God, look at my hair!” laughed Cordelia, pointing at a blurry Polaroid dated 1967. She and Whizzer, then Micah, were in college at the time the photograph in question was taken, and fully immersed in the flower child culture. The two had spent the last hour or so following Jason’s bar mitzvah laying in Whizzer’s hospital bed and reminiscing over his extensive photo collection, mostly taken by the man himself. Well, it had mostly been Cordelia reminiscing, as Whizzer laid and tried not to think about the pain, smiling only occasionally. 

“Dee?” he finally groaned lightly, struggling to sit up. 

“Yeah, Whiz Kid?” she asked, trying her best to smile.  
“Do you think Jason’s mad at me? I mean, for leaving.”

Cordelia almost gasped. Only he could be so stupidly selfless to be thinking of a thirteen-year- old’s hurt feelings while he was on his literal deathbed. 

“Whizzer…” She took his face in her hands and looked him straight in the eyes, though the sight of his protruding cheekbones and sallow skin nearly made her weep. “No. Of course he’s not. All that matters to him is that you were there. Okay?”

Whizzer dropped his head so that his forehead rested on hers. They stayed like that for awhile, neither wanting to let the other go. Whizzer began to cough violently, each cough punctuated by a deep groan of pain. Cordelia rubbed his back gently, shushing him as a mother would. As he laid back down, at her insistence, he began to sniffle.

“Where’s Marvin?” he whimpered.

“He drove Jason home. He’ll be back any minute.”

“I need him here, Dee. He needs to be here…” He began to sob desperately, as Cordelia buried his head in her shoulder and tried to hide her own tears. She felt his body shake beneath her as she ran her fingers through his hair for what seemed like an eternity.

“Dee?” he finally croaked, his voice hoarse from the crying. 

“Hmm?” she hummed softly.

“Sing to me?” he said with the desperate whine of a disconsolate toddler.

“I don’t know if I can, Whiz.”

“Please…”

She gulped, and not so much sang, but shakily whimpered, the first song that came to her mind: a tune she remembered hearing from her grandmother just before her husband, Cordelia's grandfather, had passed on.

"May the road rise up to meet you,  
May the wind be always at your back,  
May the sun shine warm upon your face,  
And the rain fall soft upon your fields,  
Until we meet again,  
May God hold you in the palm of His hand."

 

As she sang, Cordelia could have sworn she heard Whizzer mumbling something in Hebrew under his breath. She finished, kissed his forehead softly, and felt her chest tighten as he began to cough sharply again.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Marvin had scarcely returned to Trina and Mendel’s house and put Jason to bed when he got the phone call. It was Charlotte, breathless.  
“M-Marvin?”  
“What?” The pause that followed nearly made him collapse.  
“…this is not good. This is not fucking good.”  
He didn’t remember the drive back to Mount Sinai that night. Nor did he hear himself desperately ask to see Micah Matos, only to be told that no one was to be admitted in but immediate family. He only scarcely remembered grabbing Charlotte by the arm and nearly screaming in her face to do something, anything, only to be tearfully told that there was nothing she could do. He pressed his face to the window leading to Whizzer’s hospital room, heart pounding. Doctors were gathered around his lifeless form, so Marvin couldn’t even steal a glance at his lover. One of them began to pull a white sheet over his face-  
Wait.  
No.  
NO.  
“NO! PLEASE! WAIT! WAIT!”  
He pounded desperately at the glass, not feeling the tears pour from his eyes, not feeling his throat tighten as he screamed. He finally gave over to gravity, falling to his knees onto the hard, cold floor. As he continued to scream, Charlotte knelt beside him and forcefully wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face in the crook of his neck, sobbing as she had never allowed herself to do for a patient before.  
__________________________________________________________________

The Weisenbachfeld family phone rang once again around 11 pm, waking Jason, who immediately ran out of his room and to the top of the stairs. It was Trina who picked up, having sat anxiously in the living room, Mendel's hand kept in a vice grip with hers, ever since Marvin had bolted out the door about an hour ago. When she heard Charlotte say her name with that telltale solemn tone, she didn't even need to hear what she had called to say.  
"Is he...?"  
"Yes," Charlotte said, her tears audible from the other line.  
Trina hung up, and fell weeping into Mendel's arms. He breathed shudderingly into her hair, and they knelt on the floor together.  
Jason ran to the bottom of the stairs, tears beginning to well in his eyes.  
"Is he...?" he began, though he knew the answer already.  
Trina nodded, teeth clenched in a sob.  
Jason ran into his mother's arms, and buried his head in her shoulder.  
"It's all my fault," he choked out.  
"What? What are you talking about?" Trina gasped, pulling herself away from Mendel's grasp for a moment, and looking her son in his glassy brown eyes.  
"Yesterday...I prayed for God to save him. I didn't pray hard enough. I'm so sorry." The last word ended in a whimper, and he pulled away from her, putting his head in his hands.  
"Oh, Jason..." Trina placed a hand on either cheek, and pulled his face towards hers. "This is NOT your fault. There was nothing you, or any of us could do. It's nobody's fault. It just happened. Sometimes things just happen, and nobody knows why." She pulled him even closer, until their noses nearly touched. "You. Did. Not. Do. This."  
He was silent for just a moment.  
"Okay?"  
He nodded.  
"Okay."  
She kissed him on the forehead, and the three once again huddled together in a hug on the kitchen floor.  
None of them were sure where to go from here. They didn't know how they could bear to look in Marvin's face when, and if, he returned home. They weren't even sure if Marvin himself would make it till the end of the year. The only thing they could be sure of was that the three of them, their unconventional family, were together, at least for now.


End file.
